Emotions may be the most misunderstood component in the World of Work. We believe they hold us back and make us less efficient, but the opposite is true.
Understanding your emotions is the key to building resilience, channeling stress, keeping you motivated, and helping you stay focused. If you develop your emotional intelligence, you’ll unlock productivity and become a better teammate in the office.
Why is emotional intelligence considered taboo in the workplace?
In the traditional workplace, employers may see emotions as weakness or only associate emotions with romantic love. While millennials and Gen Z intend to dispel this myth, it still hangs around in most work circles.
Phrases like, “it’s not personal, it’s business” lead workers to believe that they should not put a personal value or emotional investment into their jobs. While tough times, layoffs, and budget concerns do require this kind of thinking, employees need to take personal ownership of their work in order to make an impact.
Traditional workplace thinking will tell workers that emotions hold them back: they won’t be able to make hard decisions if they’re too emotional.
But the combination of intelligence and emotional awareness makes us better employees, decision-makers, and leaders when it comes to making difficult decisions.
Dispelling the myth of emotional intelligence
However, emotional intelligence actually has twice the power of intellect alone. When you have control of your emotions and the emotional awareness to observe others’ emotions, you can predict outcomes, lower your anxiety, diffuse conflict, and overcome challenges.
Emotional intelligence gives us a competitive edge in responding instead of instantly reacting when a coworker challenges our values.
Develop your emotional awareness
As you build your emotional awareness, recognize that you will need to get comfortable being uncomfortable. You’ll be embracing emotions, waiting for them to play out, learning what to change, and disrupting your habitual reactions.
Step 1 - Observe Physical Sensations
As you try to shift your emotions away from purely reacting without reasoning, you actually start by observing your physical reactions: they indicate your emotions acting up.
Do you feel yourself smiling? Do you have a furrowed brow? Are you breathing quickly? These are the physical indicators of your emotions.
Now that you know you’re having an emotional reaction, you can name it.
When you feel a negative emotion, that’s a cue to change your circumstances or habits.
Step 2 -Active Listening as a Team
You practiced observing yourself, and now it’s time to observe your team. Observing well might be tricky if you’re communicating over video, but it’s still worth the practice!
Maintain eye contact, put away your phone, avoid interrupting, and let the other person finish their thoughts. Don’t listen to respond, listen to understand: that means asking follow-up questions, repeating what they said back to them, and inviting them to speak more.
Step 3 - Focus on the Positive
We are wired to protect ourselves from unfavorable circumstances. But since “fight or flight” is rarely life or death in the workplace, we need to repeat positive emotions in order to reinforce them.
The easiest way to put this into practice is celebrating wins with your team, starting with the small wins. As you actively improve the team’s emotions, you can trust each other and work together better.
The Future of Work: Building Empathy to Improve Efficiency
Many employers believe empathy and emotional awareness are only soft skills that individuals are born with. In order to succeed in the Future of Work, we need to use the uniquely human quality of emotional intelligence to work creatively and efficiently.
In the comments, answer these questions for yourself and encourage each other as you prepare for the Future of Work:
What holds you back from sharing emotions in the workplace?
Do you take time to acknowledge the emotions of others? Or do you feel too overscheduled and busy?
How can you work with technology to recognize emotions instead of hiding emotions in remote work?